Conference Chair Welcome Remarks

Keynote:
A New Code of Conduct for Affiliate Marketing?

A decade ago, a few networks sketched a code of conduct for affiliate marketing. Despite occasional updates, they covered only a portion of the task – banning known misbehaviors by certain publishers, but saying nothing of broader industry problems. Would a broader set of ethical principles help broaden the opportunity for affiliate marketing and affiliate marketers?

Grounding his proposals in specific instances of malfeasance – the latest affiliate lawsuits as well as selected schemes beyond the headlines – Ben Edelman will offer some fundamental principles for publishers, merchants, affiliate managers, and networks, identifying improvements that make all legitimate participants better off.

Benjamin EdelmanAssociate Professor of Business AdministrationHarvard Business School

9:30-9:50am • Room: Club

Diamond Sponsor PresentationCapturing Lightning in a Jar – The importance of Attribution in Performance Marketing

How do you recognize and track digital customer journeys while taking into account the myriad of touch points? How do you efficiently and accurately manage your budget to take advantage of your best-performing channels?

Marketers need the right tools for precise attribution to uncover and optimize the digital journeys that today’s customers take toward conversion.

Karl will share some of these platform insights and strategies to further understand channel effectiveness and optimize campaign management.

Defining an Affiliate and Merchant Partnership

Communication, personal contact and honesty are the keys to a true partnership. What techniques and tools have an affiliate and merchant (OPM) created to optimize sales and provide a competitive advantage to the partnership.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All—Choosing the Best Affiliate Types for Your Program

Coupon or Loyalty? Content or Display? What’s up with Social? When it comes to categorizing affiliates, the options are endless—more importantly, the outcomes are endless. A merchant’s engagement with various affiliate types is essential to the long-term success and growth of its affiliate marketing program. Does this mean a merchant should dedicate time and budget trying to incorporate a category of affiliates known to be a non-starter in meeting the merchant’s revenue goals? Not exactly. Learn how to navigate through the maze of affiliate types and create a balanced affiliate portfolio to drive your program’s ongoing success.

Understanding Analytics and Key Metrics to Uncover New Growth Opportunities

One of the most overlooked and least understood areas of affiliate program optimization are the opportunities that lay within your data. Numbers and KPIs tell an important story that help you identify where to get that next big affiliate, how to drive faster new customer acquisitions, where to focus your marketing spend and where to leverage strategic partnerships for higher ROI.

This session will give both best practices and case studies around how data can be used for smarter, more profitable and more sustainable affiliate program growth.

Lunch and LearnPerformance Marketing Domination: A Case Study

Discover how HasOffers by TUNE—the #1 performance marketing technology—empowers thousands of companies, like AppLift, to track and manage their own publisher and affiliate relationships. Hear directly from AppLift, a leading mobile app marketing platform, on how they have leveraged HasOffers to become masters of mobile apps performance marketing.

Managing TM+ Affiliates – Beyond The Basics

I will share information on how to integrate TM+ affiliates as an extension of the paid search team to create a dynamic synergy through varied promotions, ad titles, ad descriptions and display URLs. I will also walk through TM+ Terms and Conditions and how to screen for nefarious activity and communicate to your partners. Beyond the basics will include keyword matching, creating a comprehensive negative keyword list, ad rank and more. This session will also uncover some unique insights on how brand terms can be hijacked by affiliate without any recourse from the engines.

GENERAL SESSION – POWER PANELBig Brands on Challenges and Opportunities in 2015

Leaders from big brands Norton Symantec, Southwest Vacations, Fanatics and Cabela’s discuss the challenges and opportunities of running an effective affiliate program in 2015.

Panelists will discuss, live and uncut, some of the obstacles they face in an ever-changing industry, strategies they use to overcome them and ways they stay ahead of the curve in a hyper competitive environment to remain leaders in their industries.

Ask questions and hear the insights from four of the biggest brands on the web today.

In-House or Outsourced? This is the Question

Find out what’s the best solution for you given your current company and affiliate program context. While an in-house hire may have its advantages, especially cost-wise, going with a specialized agency usually brings you a higher level of expertise. What should you choose?

Combating Affiliate Fraud

Affiliate fraud is a threat to both merchants and other affiliates. As the strategies of deceptive affiliates become more sophisticated, so too must the responses and tools used to identify and remove them. Implementing and enforcing the three stages of compliance helps to reduce fraud in any program. Learn how to identify and combat several deceptive practices, and gain insight on the future of compliance.

Keynote:
Affiliate Network Insights to Drive Reach & Results

What is the percentage of new customers driven by affiliate vs. all other marketing channels? What is the offline impact of consumers driven by affiliate vs. all other channels? How about the resulting average order value and re-purchase rate of said consumers? For the first time in affiliate marketing, we have access to such consumer data, but more importantly, how do we make it actionable to secure more reach and drive greater results?

Desiree will share some of these new, network insights along with ways in which to strategically improve ROI and overall program efficiency.

Desiree TotoProduct Business Development LeadCJ Affiliate by Conversant

Conference Chair Opening Remarks

As the affiliate industry evolves, key stakeholders are differentiating product and service offerings to meet the changing needs of affiliates, merchants and the market. Panelists from several traditional affiliate networks and SaaS solution providers will discuss where they see the market headed in 2015 and beyond and the role of the various stakeholders. The panel will discuss several hot topics including attribution, global, mobile tracking and the separation of technology and services.

101: How to Build Your Own Affiliate Network

What are the top things a new comer to performance marketing should know? Let’s get the basics down. Learn how to start an affiliate network, get an offer, find affiliates and pricing. HasOffers has helped over 2,000 businesses start an affiliate network, and we can show you how it’s done.

CPL or CPM: What’s Best for Your
Email Marketing Budget?

For many advertisers, the decision isn’t easy when it comes to acquisition email campaigns: should you run CPL or CPM? A cocktail of both maybe? In this session, we will examine the pros and cons of both from a customer acquisition standpoint as it relates to your email budget. We’ll provide examples across different advertiser verticals of what works and what doesn’t when running CPL and CPM campaigns. Get best practices and some tips on how to maximize customer acquisition opportunities no matter which email offer type you run.

Why Independent Program Representation Is More Important Than Ever

It’s a confusing time in the affiliate industry, with networks buying affiliates and networks being acquired as part of marketing/e-commerce platforms. Now more than ever it’s essential for programs to seek independent representation to drive their strategy and key decision-making.

Robert Glazer, founder of Acceleration Partners, will explain how independent representation puts a merchant’s interests and brand first and ensures a program is as optimized and efficient as possible. Independent firms are uniquely capable of playing a strategic role as a program expands, working with SaaS platforms and technology partners to develop innovative solutions and guiding expansion to global markets.

Everything You Need to Know About Attribution & Affiliate Marketing

Everyone is talking about attribution but not many companies are actually doing it? How do you get started or how do you know if what you are doing it right? Todd will walk through all of the moving pieces for tracking, analyzing and optimizing your performance marketing partnerships using attribution and big data.

When working with hundreds or even thousands of publishers, it’s a major challenge to keep up with what types of content those publishers are posting and how it reflects on your brand. While every marketer wants affiliates to represent their brand in its best light, there’s simply too much to keep up with!

In this presentation, I’ll cover some of the core issues in content compliance—including inaccurate offers, expired promotions, off-brand or offensive language, and affiliate disclosure—as well as strategies and free tools for maintaining compliance on publisher websites.

The Data Behind a Top Performing Affiliate

The data behind a top performing affiliate: Grow your affiliate program by understanding how a top performing affiliate thinks and works. Our Affiliate Benchmarks report surveyed more than 7,000 affiliates across nearly 30 questions and in this session we’ll show you how their results compare to the industry.

Transparency is a Two-Way Street

Marketing goals are often plainly defined: “We want X results which will be measured by Y actions.” But, marketers also request from publishers to include “HOW” they aim to achieve those actions. In other words, marketers want transparency on the sources of actions being delivered. However, affiliates don’t have insight into the larger picture of attribution and therefore also have tunnel vision on other marketing strategies already in play. In order for marketers to achieve stronger results from their advertising and affiliate partners, it becomes critical for both the affiliate AND the marketer to share more information and make transparency a two-way street.

Content Driving Sales in a Cross-Device World

Editorial traffic is quickly becoming the “must buy” marketing channel for affiliate marketers. Oliver will cover recent innovative and disruptive mobile trends that provide an opportunity for new revenue streams. Learn how to gain a competitive advantage across fragmented audiences in a cross-device world.

The Legs to the Stool – Considering All Traffic Sources for Affiliate Program

Affiliates have changed over the years, and the way that we think about affiliates should change along with that trend. Affiliates are no longer just content websites or blogs in their basements, or coupon aggregators that throw deals onto their sites for you. The affiliate channels is as complex as the web itself, and you should be armed with strategies to work with all different types of traffic. The affiliate mix is a lot like “legs to a stool”, and without each leg, the program is weaker. Join us to discuss what you need to consider when evaluating each source of traffic. You shouldn’t turn away traffic just because it’s difficult to measure or understand.